The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."

Sunday, July 09, 2017

The primary theme that comes to my mind
when I think of my public life from 2007-today is the absolute treachery
and betrayal of me and my movement by the Democrat Party. I will cover
this is FAR more detail in the heart of the book, but in PM1, I
went through “heartache to activism” and after the betrayal of the
Democrats in 2007 and my subsequent departure from the party of
Jefferson, Truman, war, and disaster, I was thoroughly attacked and
kicked to the proverbial curb by some liberal/Democrat organizations
that I believed were antiwar, but they were only anti-Bush. So, PM2 will take me from "activism" back to "heartache."

As
it turns out, since Trump has gladly continued and expanded Obama’s
destructive wars for profit and power, those same organizations weren’t
even anti-Republican war, I guess. No wars have ended, nothing has
changed, except the liberals have crossed the line to attach a “neo” in
front of their label and now know they cannot criticize a Republican for
war, because if they point one finger at the GOP, four more fingers are
pointing at their own rotten core and the DNC.-- Cindy Sheehan, "Foreword: Peace Mom II: One Mother's Journey from Activism to Heartache to Revolution by Cindy Sheehan" (CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAP BOX).

The United States is at war with the very concept of the rule of law
among nations, and constitutes the most imminent threat to the survival
of the human species. Washington’s outlaw doctrine of “humanitarian”
military intervention, championed by Bill Clinton and elevated to a
defining national principle under Barack Obama, marks the U.S. as “a
rogue state, a state that is completely rejecting international norms,”
says Ajamu Baraka, of the Black Alliance for Peace. “There is no legal right for the United States to be in Syria, but yet they are in Syria with no domestic opposition."Instead, much of what should constitute the “domestic opposition” to
Washington’s flagrant crimes against peace is consumed with an obsession
to punish Russia for imaginary offenses against a fictitious American
“democracy.”

Ava and C.I. tackled season two of QUANTICO and cover a great deal: John Brennan, bad storylines, homophobia, fake liberals and so much more. This is a mammoth piece -- and they edited it severely -- it was twice the current length when they finished it.

We want another Cass album and were talking about that last week. C.I. and Betty said one was possible. We thought they were joking but with the help of Kat, Isaiah and Elaine, they came up with a track list.

What hasn’t emerged from the shock and horror of the elites, however, is a
reasonably convincing explanation for the Trump victory: the storied “deplorables,”
as Mrs. Clinton described them, rose up in rebellion against the coastal elites
and delivered them a blow from which they are still reeling. Disdained, forgotten,
and left behind, these rural not-college-educated near-the-poverty-line voters,
who had traditionally voted Democratic, deserted the party – but why?No real explanation has been forthcoming. Hillary tells us it was due, in part,
to “sexism,” and the rest was a dark conspiracy by Vladimir Putin and James
Comey. More objective observers attribute the switch to the relentless emphasis
by the Democrats on identity politics, which seems convincing until one examines
the actual statistics down to the county level in those key states – Michigan,
Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – that gave the party of Trump the keys to the White
House.Francis Shen, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota,
and Douglas Kriner, who teaches political science at Boston University, have done just
that, and their conclusion is stunning – and vitally important to those
of us who want to understand what the current relation of political forces means
for the anti-interventionist movement. They write:

“With so much post-election analysis, it is surprising
that no one has pointed to the possibility that inequalities in wartime sacrifice
might have tipped the election. Put simply: perhaps the small slice of America
that is fighting and dying for the nation’s security is tired of its political
leaders ignoring this disproportionate burden. To investigate this possibility,
we conducted an analysis of the 2016 Presidential election returns. In previous
research, we’ve shown that communities with higher casualty rates are also communities
from more rural, less wealthy, and less educated parts of the country. In both
2004 and 2006, voters in these communities became more likely to vote against
politicians perceived as orchestrating the conflicts in which their friends
and neighbors died.

“The data analysis presented in this working paper
finds that in the 2016 election Trump spoke to this part of America. Even controlling
in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that
there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate
of military sacrifice and its support for Trump. Indeed, our results suggest
that if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had
suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from
red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.”

While the Trump campaign’s foreign policy pronouncements often veered into
bombastic belligerence – “We’re
going to bomb the hell out of ISIS!” – the candidate also ventured into
territory previously alien to GOP presidential nominees. He denounced the Iraq
war – “They
lied. There were no weapons of mass destruction and they knew there were none”
– and forswore the “regime change” foreign policy that produced the bloody disasters
in Libya and Syria well as Iraq. His “America First” theme evoked the “isolationist”
sentiment that is anathema to the Washington elites – and is the default position
of the average American. And yet he did not take the reflexively anti-military
position so beloved by peaceniks of the left: he praised our veterans at every
opportunity and railed against their neglect by a government that used and abused
them. In an election that gave Trump a razor-thin victory in three key states, this
is what gave him the margin of victory.

When
President Barack Obama campaigned for reelection in 2012, he bragged
that he'd brought the Iraq war to an end and promised to do the same for
the war to Afghanistan. In fact, Obama did not end the war in Iraq, a fact he admittedonly
after Republicans blamed the rise of ISIS on the end of the war, and
the conflict in Afghanistan outlasted his tenure. His claims
nevertheless received little pushback.

In 2004, one-and-a-half years after the Bush administration launched
the war in Iraq, the authors point out that although Bush won
reelection, “he lost significant electoral ground in states and
communities that had paid the heaviest share of the war burden in
casualties.”In 2006, when the Democrats won both houses of congress, Kriner and
Shen note that “Republican losses were steepest among communities that
had suffered disproportionately high casualty rates in Iraq.” They note,
“In both 2004 and 2006, voters in these communities became more likely
to vote against politicians perceived as orchestrating conflicts in
which their friends and neighbors died.”Similarly, the authors explain that Barack Obama won the 2008
election in large part as a result of popular opposition to the war in
Iraq, which Obama claimed to oppose.“The electoral punishment suffered by Republicans in the 2000s was a
story of both casualty and economic inequality,” Kriner and Shen write.
“The communities suffering the most from the fighting overseas were
communities with lower income and education levels. These communities,
in turn, increasingly turned against political candidates insisting on
more combat.”But while “voters in such communities increasingly abandoned
Republican candidates in a series of elections in the 2000s,” their
opposition to war expressed itself in a turn away from the Democrats in
2016.After benefiting from the groundswell of opposition provoked by the
Bush administration’s wars, the Obama administration continued the wars
and sent tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan. His
administration was the first in US history to spend a full two terms at
war.

Under Democratic Party leadership, the government launched new wars
in Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Syria. Clinton ran her 2016 campaign on
calls for escalating US intervention in Syria and threatening war with
Russia, a nuclear armed power. It is a testament to the record of the
Democratic Party that Trump’s jingoistic program could be viewed by many
as the more “dovish” option.

Bernie Sanders was a better shot than Hillary Clinton.

He presented a real difference between himself and Donald Trump. (Whereas Donald supported Hillary in 2008 and the Trumps and the Clintons were social friends.)

Hillary represented the wars she supported and the costs they incurred.

But the Democratic Party wanted to deny those costs because they didn't want to confront the fact that they hadn't ended the Iraq War.

They've even limited the season to thirteen episodes under the premise that it would allow the show to be tighter and more focused.

Because of our previous comments (noted above) an ABC friend asked us to look at season two to see what went wrong.

We begged off.

We weren't in the mood to travel the country with script and episodes.

No, we were told, just episodes.

We still made excuses.

Damn NETFLIX.

As our friend pointed out, we didn't have to carry anything around the country, season two had just been made available on NETFLIX.

Sounds easy, right?

If you really think that, you missed season two's first 12 episodes.

Where are we?

That's the question viewers must have been wondering over and over as each episode featured bizarre crosscuts that flashed forward, flashed back and flashed present.

As if that alone wasn't confusing enough, they were still screwing with the characters.

Miranda (Aunjanue Ellis) had stood up to so much in season one. In season two, is she good, is she bad? Is she a terrorist? Oh, look, she's in prison as we flash forward to the future. Oh, look, in the past she's defending Alex (Priyanka Chopra). Oh look, now in the forward again, she's in prison because she tried to murder Alex.

No, none of it makes sense.

In fact, season two's first half really played out like it was attempting to turn the viewer into Tanya. Seriously, it was as though ABC had turned the show over to the Symbionese Liberation Army and we were all being reconditioned.

That would certainly explain what happened in the second half of season two.

Was the tortured confusion of all the came before supposed to make us accept Hunter Parrish as a team leader?

Or ignore his looks.

Parrish isn't repulsive by any means.

But he doesn't look like an adult despite being thirty.

There were far too many shirtless scenes for a man with the body of a toddler.

If Parrish was paying tribute to child star Culkin, Chopra got stuck serving up a homage to Shirley Temple.

Alex ceased being a character with complexities and instead became a childish imp able to solve anything and everything.

No longer a bright agent learning a job, she was the master thinker, the one who saw all, the never wrong.

It was beyond irritating.

And to build her up as the ultimate, they ended up emasculating -- not just tearing down -- the character of Ryan.

Jake McLaughlin is a strong actor.

It's why people responded to the pairing of his character with Chopra's Alex.

But when his character is weakened by bad writing, there's nothing McLaughlin can do to save it.

In elevating Alex to mythical Shirley Temple levels, the decision was made to undercut and weaken Ryan.

At one point, he's given advice, dubious advice, that since Alex is so smart, such a leader, and always right, he should head for the shadows. In response, he asked, "So that's my life challenge? Making her better?"

It got even worse.

At another point, Alex is shot and she's in an ambulance as Ryan pleads, "Alex, look at me!"

To which a season one returner says, "Sorry, Alex, I can't watch him cry. He's too pathetic."

Yes, even the other characters on the show were calling Ryan pathetic.

But it was the show runner and the writers that were inadequate.

To their credit, as viewers repeatedly checked out on the show, they realized the plots had to be simplified.

The second half was all about (a) ignoring every storyline that had come before and (b) telling only one storyline without flash fowards or flash backs.

Sadly, the simplified story wasn't worth writing.

It was another 'liberal' attack on Donald Trump.

We say 'liberal' for a reason and we'll get to it.

First though, the dubious and questionable Claire Hass (Marcia Cross) had become President.

The final straw (or so we thought) occurred the other week, when a bomb scare tested the recruits, and Elias was the only character to flee the scene, perpetuating the tired trope of the gay coward.
[. . .]Going completely off the rails, Quantico turned its only real gay character into a simpering basket case and terrorist who kills himself rather than face the music.

That was season one.

Season two saw Harry introduced. He was capable, smart and MI6.

So of course, he would be run off.

And the coward theme continued.

Gays, you understand, are all cowards on QUANTICO.

Harry had a watchful eye on Sebastian (David Lim) who he was both attracted to and suspicious of.

Sebastian is gay but imprisoned in a closet because he wants to appear straight.

Sebastian, it also turns out, may be part of the bad guys -- they never nailed this down in the second half of the second season.

Harry had seen a woman shot dead and goes after who he thinks is the killer -- Sebastian.

Harry ends up kidnapped and drugged.

Then forced to make a call to Alex.

In the call, he bails on the team.

Coward, of course, it's the unrelenting theme of the show when it comes to LGBTQ characters.

So given the chance to help, he flees -- as Simon orders him to.

Two characters -- two gay characters -- are part of season two and they're possibly more offensive than what took place in season one.

Did we say two?

We should have said four.

Will Olson (Jay Armstrong Johnson) turned out to be gay in season two's 12 episode. He also appeared to have Asperger's or some other condition.

And Owen (Blair Underwood) especially, but all the characters except Shelby and Ryan, repeatedly attacked him for it.

Would they have slammed a character in a wheelchair for being in a wheelchair?

They had no trouble telling him to shut up or rolling their eyes when he spoke or, as Owen snarled at one point, telling him "we already know that."

But they didn't know what he knew.

This didn't lead to an apology.

There was no reason for supposedly sympathetic characters to spend episode after episode making fun of the character with Asperger's -- the one who was their teammate.

But ABC allowed it, didn't they?

It gets worse.

Will was used to go after another gay character. This one was a multi-billionaire and part of the eight people making up a conspiracy to install a president.

The other seven were shown frequently.

And talked about.

Only this one, Peter Theo, was talked about more than the others -- because he was gay.

It was as though the team of 'heroes' were obsessed with him because he was gay.

(The character was an attempt to smear Trump supporter Peter Thiel.)

The other seven?

We'll assume they were all straight since their sexuality wasn't a topic of discussion.

Peter's not just gay, he's desperate.

Will shows up at a gay club playing fresh meat and Peter takes the bait, even though Will presents a fellow agent as his girlfriend.

This was beyond disgusting.

As was the thought that Peter would be so desperate to have this supposed straight guy, that he'd take them both home and when the 'straight' guy got the willies, he'd run downstairs for vodka.

Pretty much everything about season two -- even with a simplified storyline -- was offensive.

The whole team together -- and with the help of the president of America -- are unable to defeat the Donald Trump character?

Henry Roarke (played by Dennis Boutsikaris) is the Speaker of the House.

Okay, so now Trump is brilliant and he's able to be repeatedly elected (to Congress) and to rise to the position of Speaker of the House?

To make sure that viewers get that this Super Trump is supposed to be Donald, protesters were those ratty pink hats with supposed ears, you know, those things that actually looked like a pink salsa bowl turned upside down?

And Alex uses terms like "resist" while he's brought down finally as a result of his communications with the Russians.

We're sure that many Hillary Clinton supporters cheered on each lousy episode, but those people are 'liberals.'

They don't believe in anything except the dampness in their panties (or briefs) every time they see the dried up, hagged out Hillary.

It was those sort of 'liberals' that were responsible for the storylines in the second half of the show.

They were so righteous in their outrage and offense and, like their hero Hillary, so damn corrupt.

Which is why the Alex led team tried to alter a vote in the US Congress -- via blackmail.

And the only one who objected to this was Ryan -- who eventually went along because even though he pledged to defend the Constitution, he was now conditioned to dance along to every song Shirley Temple Alex sang.

When John Brennan assured the country that the CIA hadn't improperly
monitored the Senate team that compiled a report on Bush-era torture, he
fed us false information. That much is clear from Thursday's news
that "the C.I.A. secretly monitored a congressional committee charged
with supervising its activities." Either the CIA director was lying or
he was unaware of grave missteps at the agency he leads. There are
already calls for his resignation or firing from Senator Mark Udall, Trevor Timm, Dan Froomkin, and Andrew Sullivan, plus a New York Timeseditorial airing his ouster as a possibility.

Stephanopoulos: "Do you stand by the statement you have made in the past that, as effective as they have been, they have not killed a single civilian? That seems hard to believe." Brennan: "What I said was that over a period of time before my public remarks that we had no information about a single civilian, a noncombatant being killed. Unfortunately, in war, there are casualties, including among the civilian population.… And unfortunately, sometimes you have to take life to save lives." (This Week with George Stephanopoulos, April 29, 2012)
In his public comments, Brennan is clear that the Obama administration endorses a drone-first eliminationist strategy for dealing with al Qaeda — and any "military-age males" nearby. This requires a tremendous amount of killing. In June 2011, Brennan claimed: "There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop." He later, however, provided a statement to the New York Times that the newspaper said "adjusted the wording of his earlier comment": "Fortunately, for more than a year, due to our discretion and precision, the U.S. government has not found credible evidence of collateral deaths resulting from U.S. counterterrorism operations outside of Afghanistan or Iraq."
Brennan did not clarify what constituted "credible evidence," but as Justin Elliott and I myself quickly pointed out, there were many public reports — from Pakistani and Yemeni reporters and anonymous administration officials — of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes. Either Brennan did not receive the same reports of civilian casualties as other administration officials did (an implausible notion), he lacks Internet access to read these anonymous comments (equally implausible because Brennan closely responds to critics of targeted killings in his following media appearances), or he was lying. Regardless, his belief in the infallibility of the find-fix-finish cycle defies an understanding of the inherent flaws and limitations of even the most precise uses of lethal force.

Stupid enough to attack Donald as "dishonorable" for those reasons but, more to the point, who the hell is this undemocratic, government subverting piece of filth to call anyone "dishonorable"?

He belongs in prison.

Sadly, so did the gals and guys were were supposed to root for on QUANTICO.

What did Gore Vidal repeatedly say the US needed?

A Constitutional convention.

The team lost the vote in Congress.

Then Henry became president.

And he called for a Constitutional convention.

And the 'liberal' side became very clear: The people were not to be trusted.

A Constitutional convention, we were told by the team, would destroy the country.

Again, can't trust We The People.

So what did the team do?

Back to blackmail.

Or, as Owen put it, "lie, manipulate and blackmail."

So Shelby threatened a politician over "your affair with Senator Davis."

Miranda went after a senator who might lose votes "when they find out that you were part of a White separatist group."

Ryan went after a politician who had a "dominatrix on speed dial."

The team is made up of CIA and FBI members.

And they blackmail to interfere with democracy.

Writers and the failed show runner really thought people would applaud that?

They thought having Alex step forward broadcasting "a phone call with Russian operatives" would have the audience cheering from the edge of their seats.

No wonder viewers were fleeing throughout the second season.

If you're not getting how bad it was, we left out Alex's blackmail for the proposed convention.

She could, she informed the politician, file "charges all the way from corporate fraud to outright treason."

Get it?

This is what passes for 'liberal' when the hicks of Hollywood start preaching.

Alex has proof of corporate fraud but will sit on it.

Even worse, she has proof of treason but will sit on it.

And then she wants to give a speech proclaiming the importance of light and emerging from the darkness?

We weren't surprised she was shot in the middle of that speech -- we were only surprised no one booed the hypocrite.

The audience did, that's why they were fleeing.

After watching season two, we grasped that was the only sane response.

Between that and pulling QUANTICO off of HULU, there was no way the show wasn't going to tank. The only surprise is that after all that, ABC thinks it can now be easily fixed and saved.

So what? Did the reporter object? Does anyone at CNN have a moral sensibility? Are they all *brain-dead*?

Justin Raimondo added,

Lee FangVerified account@lhfang

Interesting: Gizmodo confirms awkward language in that CNN story was inserted not by a reporter, but CNN exec https://gizmodo.com/how-cnn-made-its-own-reporting-sound-like-blackmail-1796656983?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow…

4 replies14 retweets34 likes

The nonsense is from Lee's Tweet, by the way.

Justin Raimondo's questions are quality ones.

And, more to the point, the article was online bullying and online blackmail.

Idiots like the Lee and GIZMODO crowd insist that CNN wouldn't retract the offensive lines because of some blah blah blah.

No, they won't retract because they were intended to be perceived as the threat that they actually were.

Mock us, CNN was saying, and we'll go after you.

That was the message and it doesn't matter who wrote it.

It was published.

And the month's not over and already a scandal CNN thought had died down is resurfacing.

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About Me

Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty, "Ava" started out this site as five students enrolled in journalism in NY. Now? We're still students. We're in CA. Journalism? The majority scoffs at the notion.
From the start, at the very start, C.I. of The Common Ills has helped with the writing here. C.I.'s part of our core six/gang. (C.I. and Ava write the TV commentaries by themselves.) So that's the six of us. We also credit Dallas as our link locator, soundboard and much more. We try to remember to thank him each week (don't always remember to note it here) but we'll note him in this. So this is a site by the gang/core six: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. (of The Common Ills).